A number of critics attack the character of God’s love for all humanity by comparing Hell to Auschwitz. Would a loving God send his creatures there?

There are several differences between hell and Auschwitz, but two are dramatic and must be emphasized: 1. No one would choose to be in Auschwitz and 2. no one would choose to remain there if given the option to leave. Whereas scripture teaches us that the character of the human heart is such that unless God changes us, we would rather live in eternal torment than in harmony with our Creator.

First, our hearts are set against him. We suppress the truth about God (Rom 1:18-33). We willfully violate the laws he reveals in scripture and inscribes on our hearts (Rom 2). We do not seek to know or love God, but rather to replace him (Rom 3:10-20). We are, by nature, children of wrath (Eph 2:3).

Second, this hardened animosity toward God is stronger than our desire to escape anguish and torment. Observe that the Rich Man in Jesus’ parable in Luke 16:19-31 does not ask to be let out of the place of torment and ascend to be with Abraham and the poor man Lazarus. Not at all. He wants Lazarus to come down:
‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’(Luke 16:24)

He sees heaven, sees glory, sees Abraham and doesn’t want it. He wants relief but not redemption.
The parable of Lazarus and the rich man only illustrates the biblical pattern of rebellion. God provides life, love, sustenance, and virtue. Humans respond by repudiating God. As life becomes coarse and suffering increases, the rebellion only gathers steam. Torment does not lead to repentance and dependence but to increased hatred.

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God’s wrath is, for those who reject God, preferable to repentance and surrender which would bring mercy and peace.

We must not, therefore, think of hell as a place where God imprisons people against their will. Hell is the place where the human will is fully actualized.

This leads, of course, to a deeper question. God is omniscient. God knew from eternity those who would be damned. Why did he create them?

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We cannot say then that God created morally neutral beings and then caused them to rebel against him and then punished them for acting according to the evil he created in their hearts. That is, sometimes, the caricature that critics of Christianity like to paint. It is, also, a caricature that many would like to lay at the feet of Calvinism in particular. But the problem is not one that is unique to any one theological perspective. All Christians believe that God is omniscient. Therefore, all must wrestle with the fact that God created many millions of people knowing that they would reject him and live forever in torment.
So God did not create people and then cause them to rebel against him.

God did create people, giving them life, love, the blessings of his created order, truth, common virtue, knowing that they would harden their hearts against him and return his blessings with curses. In fact, he created all people knowing that every single one of us would despise him, his love and his many gracious gifts.

God would be fully justified in handing each of us over to this despising and allowing all humans to continue to hate him for eternity. This would be both consistent with his love – creating, blessing, delighting in the beloved and then giving the beloved the desire of her heart – and consistent with his justice – sinners would experience the consequences of sin.

Instead, he choose to rescue some from this fate and not others. He chose to draw some to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ (John 6:37-40, 44, Romans 8:29-31, Eph 2:4-10) and allow others to follow their own hearts to their own end. As RC Sproul has pointed out so brilliantly, no one is treated unfairly. Some receive mercy. Others justice. No one can complain that God is in the wrong. And no one can say that they have not been loved by him.

But, to return to the problem, God determined to create millions of people, knowing that he would shower them with love and truth and that they would nevertheless hate him and, here’s the crux, knowing that he would not to soften their hatred and turn them to love, knowing that in the end he would say to them, “thy will be done—”

Why?

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Paul, as he often does, asks what appears to be a rhetorical question. But the question is not really an open one. God allows people to follow their hearts and choose hell over repentance so that his loving-kindness to his enemies might be displayed during their lifetimes and his justice might be displayed at the Judgment (Rev.20)

Just judgment makes God’s justice manifest and when his character is revealed. he is glorified.
So is this what it is all about? God’s own glory?

Yes. That is what everything is about. God is the origin and measure of all that is good. A truly good being will glorify all that is good and that means God will glorify himself and all his attributes above all things.

With regard to those who despise him and violate his law, his glory is made manifest in the outworking of his justice – his “doing what is right”

But even then, and this must be observed, God does not merely snuff them out. They bear his image. They are his creatures. He gives even those who hate him the desires of their hearts. They would not have it any other way.